NCAA Tournament Betting at a Sportsbook

Submitted by admin on Thu, 03/29/2007 - 14:50

Sportsbook betting is rarely more popular than during the NCAA Tournament or 'March Madness', as it is called.

Many a online sportsbook reports that the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament has become one of their most popular weekends of the entire year. Everyone follows the NCAA Tournament and a lot of people bet on it at the online sportsbook. Sportsbook wagering on the tournament involves looking at many factors.

The smaller and lesser-known schools sometimes get overlooked and yet can provide excellent value at an online sportsbook. You see schools like George Mason or Bucknell providing great sportsbook value in their matchups, especially against marquee schools like Kansas or North Carolina.

Marquee teams from big time conferences can sometimes offer no value in the tournament because they are so popular with the sportsbook betting public. The lesser known teams are where the value lies at the sportsbook and where you should start your handicapping.

Sometimes as the NCAA tournament progresses you can get some value at the online sportsbook on the marquee name teams but it does take time. If you have a good coach that also helps with a marquee team.

The better college basketball coaches do not allow any letdowns and get their teams to maximize their talent, even in the early rounds of the tournament. Sometimes you can find excellent value at the sportsbook when the middle seeds match up against each other in the first couple of rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

Sometimes one of the seeds is underrated and you can often get good value against the sportsbook line. You can see this in matchups where a 5-12 matchup takes place, a 6-11, etc. It is also important when handicapping the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament sportsbook line to take into account a team’s momentum heading into the games.

You sometimes have teams really playing well going into the tournament and they continue that momentum into the tournament. Conversely, you have to be aware of teams that don’t really belong in the tournament, and yes there are teams that don’t belong. You have teams that won their conference tournament to get in but really don’t belong.

You also have the 15 and 16 seeds that often are totally overmatched. Usually you take the underdogs in the tournament at the sportsbook but you have to be very careful about taking the poor 15 or 16 seeds. Betting the tournament is the best time of the year for many sportsbook gamblers. It is a time to enjoy everything that March Madness offers at the online sportsbook.